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I was watching the the Motion of Confidence in the Mahon Tribunal online the other night, and I was taken aback at the unbelievably poor speech given by John Gormley- who was taking the lead for the Government on it. He seemed totally half-hearted and under the weather, and left the chamber immediately after drawling off one of the dullest speeches ever given to the Dáil.
His speech consisted of a thrilling timeline of legislative events since the Tribunal was set up, and then he proceeded to read - word for word - the Explanatory memorandum of the Tribunals of Inquiry Bill 2005, which in Opposition he had opposed to the last.
Willie O'Dea's speech (which followed immediately) may have been a purile stream of vicious partisan bile, but at least it was cogently written, with many thoughtful reflections on the Tribunal process and the jurisprudence governing it.
Gormley's speech, on the other hand, gave the impression of a speech that had been written by a member of the Young Greens in on work expierience, aided by nothing but the Irish Statute Book website.
Here are a few snippets of Gormley's skilled oratory:
Barack Obama, eat your heart out!Two Acts from 1998 allowed for the changing of a tribunal’s terms of reference, at the request of the tribunal or following consultation between the tribunal and the Attorney General on behalf of a Minister. Subsequently, in July 1998, at the request of the planning tribunal, its terms of reference were further expanded to give it a mandate to investigate any allegation of corruption associated with the planning process.
In June 2001, the then sole member of the tribunal, Justice Flood, in anticipation of extensive future public inquiries, requested the appointment of further members to the tribunal. The Government responded to this request by making provision in a 2002 Act that enabled additional members to be appointed to a tribunal. On foot of this, two additional members were appointed to the planning tribunal in October 2002, one of them the current chairman, Judge Mahon. It was necessary to introduce a further Act in 2004 to ensure that Judge Mahon, as the then new chairperson of the tribunal, could make orders regarding applications for costs incurred during the tenure of the preceding chairman. A separate Act in May 2004 provided, among other things, that a tribunal consisting of more than one member might act in divisions.
Notwithstanding the fact that the tribunal was expanded to comprise three members, its subsequent work, based on its terms of reference, proved very unwieldy. The tribunal published a fourth interim report in June 2004, which gave a broad overview of the work then on hand and indicated that there remained a large volume of work in respect of which public hearings had not yet begun. The tribunal indicated that it could see this work carrying on until 2014 or 2015. Accordingly, it requested changes to its terms of reference to allow it more discretion in the issues that it investigated or chose not to pursue, so as to shorten the anticipated duration of its work.
Gormley's contribution drew derision from many media commentators, and from other members of the Dáil. Eamon Gilmore described it in the following terms:
Was anyone else watching as Gormley rattled off this dross and then padded out of the chamber immediately afterwards? I'm sure that myself and Eamon Gilmore were not the only people shocked that Gormley had not got a single cogent argument to oppose the Fine Gael motionThe Minister for the Environment……...gave one of the most pathetic speeches I have heard in a long time. The political leader and Minister who has been a champion of good planning and integrity in politics, rather than contributing to the debate or giving a speech that meant anything, was reduced to reading out the explanatory memorandum of a Bill that he said when he was in opposition he would oppose to the last. It is a pathetic sight to see a Minister come in here to be walked on and then cut and run after he has delivered his speech.
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Originally Posted by Compound Fracture
